THE NEW PRUSSIAN RENAISSANCE: LITERARY COMMEMORATIONS OF QUEEN LUISE

Abstract

In the wake of World War Two, Germany abandoned its onetime national idols, including Queen Luise of Prussia (1776–1810). Yet despite assertions that her legend has become obsolete (Förster, 2011), contemporary writers are rediscovering Queen Luise following the renaissance of interest in Prussia during the first ‘Prussian Wave’ (1977–82) and the ‘Prussian Year’ of 2001. This article argues that she is being repurposed by what I term a ‘third wave’ of Prussian nostalgia currently occurring in Germany. Drawing on memory studies and nostalgia studies, I argue that Queen Luise can be considered a ‘lieu de mémoire’ (Nora, 1984) whose changing commemorations reflect modulating perspectives on the Prussian era during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The article provides an overview of the rediscovery of Prussian history before analysing three representative texts that reflect shifting attitudes towards Prussia and the Queen: Gertrud Mander's conventional biography Königin Luise (1981), Friedrich Christian Delius's novel, Der Königsmacher (2001), which features a cameo appearance from the Queen, and Thomas Hettche's fictional account of the early nineteenth-century Pfaueninsel in Berlin-Wannsee, Pfaueninsel (2014). I propose that these commemorations reflect both the twenty-first century trend for nostalgia (Boym, 2001), as well as a tendency towards ‘perverse nostalgia’ (Kohlke, 2017).